The Obama administration may be falling behind in efforts to stop foreign fighters getting into the United States to commit terrorist acts, say Republicans leaders probing visa laws and the tracking of potential attackers.
Concern is growing on Capitol Hill that the Obama administration has not laid out a concrete plan or kept Congress informed about whether loopholes are being closed in a visa waiver program and whether it is still too easy for jihadis to enter and leave the United States.
“What are they doing? I don’t think they’re doing enough,” said Sen. Richard Burr, R-N.C., the chairman of the Intelligence Committee, in an interview with the Washington Examiner.
The sweeping and alarming successes of last summer’s territorial gains by the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria and news that U.S. and European citizens had joined the fight in Syria triggered an investigation by House Homeland Security Chairman Mike McCaul, R-Texas, into President Obama’s policies and his administration’s ability to track terrorists. The risk of coordinated attacks in the West was graphically demonstrated by the recent slaughter of cartoonists and journalists in Paris by homegrown French jihadis believed to be working for an al Qaeda affiliate in Yemen.
FBI Director James Comey testified last fall that he expects a “terrorist diaspora” to come out of Iraq and Syria, and noted that fighters have been able to travel in and out of the conflict areas with alarming ease. Now Republican leaders say they worry that U.S. counterterrorism is not improving quickly enough as extremists show their lethal ability to hit targets all over the world.
McCaul’s initial findings have underscored his early concern. According to a knowledgeable GOP aide, the committee is alarmed over whether the Obama administration has taken enough steps to prevent radicalized individuals from leaving to fight overseas and from coming back to the country.
U.S. intelligence and law enforcement agencies have stepped up their response to the threat and the Department of Homeland Security has increased the amount of information a traveler using a Visa Waiver Program must provide. The program allows citizens from some countries to enter the United States for up to 90 days without a visa.
When he testified last year, Comey estimated that roughly a dozen Americans were still fighting with terrorist groups in Syria, and many more fighters had joined the Islamic State from countries participating in the U.S. Visa Waiver Program, giving them easy access to the U.S.
The administration and national security officials have also expressed concern about the number of American and European citizens traveling to Syria to join the jihad and the possibility that they could return to carry out terrorist plots here at home.
But the administration has yet to outline a clear plan or tangible steps to prevent the return of Islamic State fighters to American soil. And Tuesday’s State of the Union address did little to clear up questions.
Burr says the intelligence agencies are on the case and doing their job — working flat out. He said, “Our intelligence community? … They’re working 24/7 tracking foreign fighters.”
But Rep. Adam Smith, D-Wash., said tracking terrorist suspects travel is a herculean task. “I was talking to an intelligence official recently and he said, ‘it’s not like finding a needle in a haystack, it’s like finding the right needle in a stack of needles.’”
The attack on the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo, followed by a series of police raids in major European cities to break up terrorist cells, threw a spotlight on the threat posed by terrorists with western passports traveling abroad to get combat experience in the Muslim world and then returning to carry out attacks.
For many defense hawks on Capitol Hill, the best way to combat the foreign fighter threat is to bring the fight more aggressively to the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq. Burr pointed out that tracking every passport holder who has traveled to and from Syria is a far from fool-proof plan.
“The French proved they couldn’t do it … we can’t use that as our national defense. We’ve got to more aggressively prosecute the fighters over there,” he said.
Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., agreed, arguing that there is no way U.S.-led airstrikes alone will degrade and destroy the Islamic State because the group is very entrenched and selling wheat and oil to fund its fight.
Secretary of State John Kerry, in London Thursday for a meeting of the U.S.-led coalition fighting the Islamic State, praised Europe for stepping up its information sharing with the U.S. after the Paris attacks revealed that French courts had convicted one of the perpetrators for a plot on the U.S. embassy in Paris.
Kerry also said foreign fighter networks have been broken up in “Austria, Malaysia, in other countries,” and foreign fighters have been prosecuted in Germany, Australia and the United Kingdom.
Kerry’s British counterpart, Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond, said the U.K. is working on a plan to give its law enforcement authorities more power to intercept foreign fighters who have traveled to Syria and then to other countries with plans to return to Europe or the U.S. “at the point of exit.”
“We need to work with our partners in Europe because many of these people are transiting through points in Europe,” he said.
Hammond also praised Turkish leaders for their help in informing European authorities of people seeking to cross their border and into Syria.
“Turkey is doing a fantastic job of intercepting people who are seeking to get across the border into Syria,” Hammond said. “Of course, the Turkish prime minister was absolutely right: They cannot be 100 percent successful because of the nature of that border, but they are doing a great job.”
Republicans on the Hill are not convinced. Graham Thursday singled out Turkey, a historically secular nation that has shifted dramatically toward political Islam in recent years, “as a huge problem here.”
“They’re coming across the border faster than [the Islamic State] can train them,” Graham said.
Republicans are not alone in expressing concern about the foreign fighter threat. Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., recently called the Visa Waiver Program the “Achilles heel of America” in the wake of the Paris attacks.
McCaul believes more needs to be done to increase the security of the program, pointing out that the administration does not have a formal written strategy to combat terrorist travel. The most recent strategy document dates back to the Bush administration in 2006.
“The White House must do what our committee is doing,” a GOP aide told the Examiner. “Review programs designed to obstruct terrorist travel, identify gaps in our defense, and fix them in light of this urgent threat.”
The administration also needs to improve terrorist watch-listing and information-sharing as well as break down barriers between intelligence authorities and law enforcement, McCaul argues.
